


Airplanes

by the3amnovelist



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, I'm Sorry, One Shot, So much angst, The AU no one asked for, but not tgt, where they are kind of tgt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-03
Updated: 2015-10-03
Packaged: 2018-04-24 14:17:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4922821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the3amnovelist/pseuds/the3amnovelist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carmilla doesn’t like airplanes, and Laura grows to understand why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Airplanes

\+ Airplane

The crowd was deafening, flashes of green and black littering the stands, but only the thundering of the basketball against the polished court and squeaking of shoe soles fill her senses. Noises seem to cancel each other out around her, and her body grows heavy with every sharp twist of her body, away from her opponents.

The buzzer rings, and her feet lands, unsteady. But she hears the crowd finally, and she feels Carmilla’s arms wrap around her waist, a silent support as she receives shoulder bumps from her teammates. They don’t quite measure up to the “good job out there, cupcake” she receives at the end of it all.

Her teammates are still cheering, all of them still in high spirits, adorning the locker room with cheers and the shower stall with melodies, she tries to focus on getting herself cleaned up as soon as possible, but finds herself caught up in the light atmosphere, joining in and belting to the bridge of the song.

The acapella singing is replaced by loud bass and alcohol when the basketball team pulls up at the party, celebrating their win for the season. Laura goes through more cheers, more slaps on the back and declines countless red solo cups offered in her direction as she walks down the cramped hallway of the party location, a frat house on the west side of the campus.

Kirsch greets her with a hug, and she winces when she calls her a bro, which is followed by a tight squeeze, knocking air out of her lungs. “Ease up, meatbrain,” she hears a voice that’s always an octave lower than anyone else’s ring and Kirsch’s weight lift off her. Dark locks and leather pieces come into sight when the ginger’s build is pulled aside. Of course, there’s some other girl, like at any other party, following at Carmilla’s feet. Laura doesn’t mind, not really, she’s used to seeing girls making heart eyes at her best friend.

“I thought you hated frat parties,” Kirsch groans when Carmilla finally releases the eagle grip she had on his shoulder, eyes wide at the girl’s presence. Laura quirks her eyebrows, as if repeating the question. She doesn’t need to hear it to know though. Carmilla always came to the parties celebrating the basketball team’s win. Her win. Even if they were held at the Zeta Omega Mu house. Laura still likes to hear it from Carmilla herself nonetheless.

“Hey superstar, mind teaming with me for a game of beer pong?” Sarah-Jane asks, before Carmilla could let a sarcastic remark slip, and Laura shakes her head, her hand drifting off to hold Carmilla’s.

“My sole partner is Carmilla,” the basketball player explains, smiling at her teammate.

“It’s tradition.” Carmilla adds, when Laura pulls her in the direction of the beer pong table, though Laura’s not quite sure whether it’s directed at her lovesick puppy or the girl clad in the school’s black letterman jacket.

**-x-**

It doesn’t take long for Carmilla to pick up that Laura was tired of the party, exhausted from having to keep up a smile throughout with everyone taking their turn to greet the basketball star. It does take quite a bit of time for her to be able to get Laura out of the party, with the space filling up with more people that feel the need to make small talk with them when they pass by.

Laura doesn’t like the coldness in the air at night, but it brings her relief, slapping her in the face and sobering her up, knocking the grin she’d been wearing off her face. The crowd is thinner on the outside, where only a group of hipsters lay around on the stretch of grass, beer cans littering the space around them.

They walk to the back of the house, up the hill, the only warmth in the freezing night being their ragged breaths and intertwined hands. The oak tree waits above the woods, its thick trunks standing out from the thinner ones gathered at the other end of the hill, its roots a support they lean on as they sit under its shelter.

“Unlucky night, huh,” Laura sighs when the view of the sky she’s greeted with isn’t littered with bright dots. Carmilla only hums in response, her lips vibrating against the crown of Laura’s head. The setting wasn’t new, Laura’s head resting against Carmilla’s shoulder while the latter makes full use of the tree roots’ support to manage the weight on her body, their limbs and tangled mess between two bodies.

It’s not the first time city lights have interrupted their stargazing session, and they’ve learnt that once the night dies down, the stars start to show. They’ve grown patient, and to enjoy the silence that hangs over them like a curtain, as the party eventually evaporates, leaving the house almost empty, and the music gone.

The song of the wind, blowing gently, rustling leaves, accompanies their wait for the lights to dim, separating them from the rest of the world for that short moment, for the sky to light.

It doesn’t take long, Carmilla only adjusted the now probably sore shoulder three times, and hummed seven songs. Laura counted. The darkness began to shine, dot by dot. And they spot the one that always seemed to sparkle the brightest. The one they’ve claimed to be their own Polaris. Laura doesn’t know what it stands for, nor the purpose of the fanciful name, but she likes it. She likes having a piece of something that Carmilla only shares with her. It makes their years of friendship stand out, makes her feel important to the girl, who offers little words to reassure her.

She admires the way the stars leave shadows along Carmilla’s jawline, defining the sharp feature, and colouring her skin a paler shade. The cold wipes the once red lips down to a light shade of pink ; hanging slightly open as her head tilts in the direction of the sky, her dark locks falling backwards.

“Do you think we’d be able to see Polaris, when we’re not at this exact spot?” she asks, and she sees Carmilla’s pupils move to the corner of her eyes, glancing at her, before focusing on the stars once more.

“We’ll see it anywhere, as long as the skies are clear,” Carmilla whispers, her lips moving only slightly, just a tinge, before returning to its resting position, slightly parted. Laura tells her she wants to travel the world with Carmilla, to see every angle of Polaris possible. And Carmilla chuckles, her eyelids dropping as her vision field tilts down, before responding with a short “fancy dreams”. She rambles on about taking the window seat of the airplane, and of the cities they’d visit, to convince, indignant of being mocked.

An airplane hovers past, its engine piercing their bubble of silence, its trail clouding the skies, as if on cue. She sees Carmilla’s eyebrows knit together, but she’s not sure if it’s a flaw in her plans, or the now foggy skies. She doesn’t want to know. So she doesn’t ask.

She does question the taller girl when she states that she doesn’t like airplanes.

“They take people away,” she answers with a sigh, like Laura should already know, “and never give them back.”

“How else are we going to travel the world?”

“We won’t.”

**-x-**

She watches as Carmilla sorts through folder after folder, replying emails and answering calls, seated in front of their coffee table, which by now is coated with sheets of paper and stationary. She never got to know what these were about, but the sudden arrival of workload from her internship seemed to always come on a yearly basis, after the finals were done with.

“These don’t look like what a philosophy major is supposed to be handling,” Laura winces at the numbers and terms she sees, sitting on the couch behind Carmilla, who was cross-legged on the grey carpet.

Carmilla just replies with a nonchalant hum, as usual, and Laura starts organising the mess Carmilla had made, putting the documents back in the file they belong before categorising them according to color, something she knows Carmilla works better with than the actual content of the file.

The two bustle around the tiny living space, as hours tick by, and the files piled atop the stack of items that Carmilla had sorted through were increasing, and the undone documents decreasing, the task list checked off to the last five. Laura offers to go buy dinner, and they don’t bid each other goodbye.

They’d long forgotten how to say words of farewell, knowing that they’d end up back in their apartment, together, at the end of the day. They’ve grown used to expecting the other to be back.

Carmilla is left to complete the rest of her assignment, which she claimed to be from an internship she signed up for at the well-renowned Corvae Corps. Which wasn’t really a lie, really. More of a half-truth. Her phone rings, and the ID that flashes on the screen is enough for her to put down her work. After all, Mattie did not call often.

“Mother’s sending more over,” no greetings, just a strained voice that cuts straight to the point. Sisterly love did not exist, at least not over the seldom graced phone calls, where Mattie is still at work, cracking her brains on a workload numerous times larger than her current one.

She understands, or at least tries to, for she would be in that position soon enough.

“I hope she got the address right,” Carmilla answers, and Mattie’s laughter is what ends the phone call.

**-x-**

“I’ll bring food back,” Laura promises before she heads out, leaving Carmilla surrounded by the pile of mess she created.

Dates. Laura has been on those very often nowadays, hasn’t she? Carmilla barely remembers her being around the past week, she doesn’t see her as often on campus anymore either, not after they enter the school gates and Laura’s headed in some other direction. Carmilla no longer sees her waiting by the door of her literature class, the last lesson, leaving Carmilla to walk down the hallways alone – enough times to make Carmilla stop looking for her after school.

She makes a point to go down to the outdoors basketball court after class on Tuesday, when the basketball team usually holds their training sessions, seeing as Laura had been coming back sweat-stained on Tuesday nights.

The court is relatively empty when she arrives, but she spots Laura, her hair in a ponytail, moving across the court, almost as if she was dancing, the way her body bends at sharp turns, her feet pivoting at an ever changing rhythm as her speed varies, to aid her escape from the ginger towering over her.

She starts to wonder if her friend has a liking for redheads, seeing as she’d been around those a lot lately. Instead, she leans by the bleachers, blending into the shadows, unnoticed by the two engaged players prancing around the court, sweat dripping down their foreheads as they struggle to breathe, stamina wearing out.

Laura seeks escape from the world on the court, the extreme focus it requires of her distracting her from everything else, even Carmilla. The only thing she captures would be Danny, how her irises follow her every movement, her stride large enough to cover the loss in reaction time. It sparks something in Laura, the challenge on the court a thrill she embraces.

It doesn’t take long before both players are drained and for their limbs to lose strength and their footing to lose stability. Carmilla moves, to offer assistance to her faltering friend, but halts when she sees the girl rest her head on the redhead’s crouched over body, leaning her weight onto the tall player. Her lips purse, her footsteps silent when she leaves the court.

Her presence fades, unnoticed by the two in the middle of the dimly lit arena, noted only by the concrete she moves across.

**-x-**

“Carm?” she calls, her voice projected at the figure that just left to get more writing supplies for her never ending workload. There’s no response from the other party, only a click from the front door.

Of course, Laura takes it upon herself to answer the call, seeing that the one it’s meant for isn’t in vicinity and that the phone was within an arm’s distance. She frowns when the number she sees doesn’t have an ID, and she starts to question her decision to answer. Her thumb runs over the answer button before she thinks through, and the content that is delivered to her ears weren’t pleasant.

One night stands calling with hope to make it a two time thing isn’t something Laura is used to dealing with. Nor dealt with before, considering her clean track record. It ruins her mood, which she blames on the explicit language and description involved. She blocks the number, which she reasons that is to Carmilla’s convenience anyway, since the girl probably didn’t have any intention of carrying the relationship with the caller any further. _She didn’t even save her number._

She doesn’t mention her deed nor the call to Carmilla, instead playing with the globe she bought awhile back, marking another city she has on her bucket list. She does perk up though, when Carmilla slaps pieces of paper on the desk before leaving. Curiosity takes over Laura, as her fingers pick the stack up, her focus shifting from the globe.

Under the countless receipts are scribbled numericals, which are soon scrunched up and thrown away, unbeknownst to its meant recipient.

**-x-**

“How does Lyon sound?” Laura asks as she leans into Carmilla, who was sandwiched between the couch and Laura, her legs sprawled open as Laura rests between them cross-legged which Carmilla’s laptop perched atop her lap.

Carmilla only hums, her eyes fixated on whatever was playing on their television screen, its saturation reflected in the girl’s dark eyes. She knows Carmilla isn’t listening, but she continues anyway, talking about the city situated in France and its medieval features.

“You love those antique-y stuff,” she shrugs, turning around to make eye contact, searching for approval. She doesn’t get much back, except for that same old hum. It had never irritated her as much.

Her fingers stretch, grabbing and pulling Carmilla’s head down to face her, the one on the other end of her approach groaning in the process, her eyes not once leaving the TV. Teeth is bared in annoyance.

“Hands were made to caress, sweetheart,” she growls as she shakes Laura’s grip on her off. Laura fights the giggle bubbling up her throat, fighting her own muscles to hide the smile growing and instead using a nod of her head to direct the girl’s attention to the computer screen.

“I thought it was well-established that I like us where we are.”

“France is a beautiful country,”

“So is Austria,”

“Lyon is full of renaissance!”

“So is Styria.”

“Why are you so afraid of leaving?” Laura snaps, and Carmilla hums, and silence downs the living room again, leaving them each to their own thoughts.

Carmilla isn’t afraid to leave. She’s afraid of the change that comes with it, new places change people, they change dynamics, and she was comfortable with how they were now. Years of acquaintance was built upon this space, and she doesn’t want the new landscape to change them.

She knows leaving is inevitable. She just doesn’t want to face it yet, to see Laura in a different place where she was not. But of course she says nothing.

Not even when Laura remains adamant about leaving Styria.

Carmilla hates airplanes. Ever since her brother was shipped away to some part of the United Kingdom, she’s never liked them. Especially after they lost contact, and he never came back, even after years of waiting. She hates how useless they are, when her mother was just a flight away, but never seemed to board, to visit her, but instead sending something in her stead. A card, with nothing but a signature. A crate of work to prepare her for her role in the company. It didn’t matter how many stars she wished upon, no one came back after leaving.

She watches as the desk in their bedroom receives another décor, an airplane model, crisp white lined with a light shade of blue. She watches as Laura fawns over it, and the countless dots she’d drawn onto the atlas.

Carmilla hates airplanes, but she doesn’t have it in her to take Laura’s dreams away from her.

**-x-**

Days are checked off the calendar, and Laura is lost to her crowd of acquaintances in Silas, unable to make enough time for Carmilla once more. Carmilla would normally be just fine with staying up late at night, her textbooks and half-written essays her only companion till Laura came home, but she wasn’t this time around. She was running out of time, which each hour she doesn’t see Laura ticking against the back of her mind.

She hasn’t told Laura yet, she hasn’t told anyone. Not even herself. She doesn’t want to accept its arrival till the last possible moment. The only thing that keeps pulling her back, reminding her of reality are Mattie’s calls, reminding her of her voyage and her objectives throughout the business trips.

Each night is wasted, as her arms hold Laura, refusing to let her heavy eyelids fall, afraid of losing the time she has left. She doesn’t want to have to leave, and she’s searching for a reason to stay. Laura isn’t there when she wakes up in the morning.

She’s been walking to school with Danny a lot nowadays, and Carmilla isn’t one to butt into others’ personal space, but she’s trying to. Trying to steal Laura’s time for herself, to be able to talk to her.

There’s a month left. Four weeks. Thirty days. She has more than enough nights to feel Laura’s weight against her shoulder. She can wait.

Except days seem to fly past, agony swallows her when Laura stumbles through the door past midnight, drunk from the day’s events, drowsy from the attention she has to give to everyone else. Too tired to be able to be engaged in a conversation. So Carmilla just holds on and waits for her time.

There’s a week left, and Laura has yet to come back for dinner, and the last time they’ve had lunch together was a long time ago. Carmilla doesn’t count. She doesn’t like to be reminded of her drifting companion, who seemed to have taken a liking to the tall redhead she’d seen on the court the previous time.

“I’ll be late,” Laura calls over her shoulder, as she pulls on her shoes.

Her plane ticket sits inside her passport, stashed between the pages of philosophy textbook. She listens to time tick by, and for the same cycle of a tired and drained Laura, too busy for her now to slip between the doors of their shared apartment. Her nightmare was taking place. Their dynamics were shifting. They were changing.

“Bye,” she says, loud enough for Laura to hear, soft enough for herself to block out. Laura offers a puzzled smile with furrowed brows in return. The word is foreign to the two of them. The syllable something unheard of in a long time. She doesn’t say it back, choosing to close the door behind her with the expression intact.

She was leaving.

And Laura doesn’t know

**-x-**

The airport is still white-washed, cold and empty like she remembered. Families broken up as they bid their farewells and cry their loss. Carmilla doesn’t like the idea of it all. But her mother had summoned her back. It was a call due sooner or later. Something she had tried to push back. Her feet taps against the marble tiles, uncertain of what to do whilst she waits for her boarding call.

She had come too early, with too much time to spare. How ironic, she chuckles. Just hours prior she had been fighting for more time. A few more moments, minutes, hours. One more day.

The closet, empty of her belongings seemed so much brighter. She’s not used to it. The room so devoid of _her_. She wonders if Laura will replace her. She wonders if anyone would come. If anyone would ask her to stay. If Laura would ask her to stay. Would she stay?

She hums, a response to her own question. She didn’t know the answer. And she was afraid. The atlas rough, its prints fading from the years of abuse. But the specks of ink littered over its surface is still jet black, at the older imprints grey. The cities spelt with a gentle hand over the piece, these names the only thing Carmilla brings along.

It’s the only piece of Laura she keeps, her dreams.

She hears her flight being called, and smiles. It tastes bitter. There’s no one here to send her off. Not even Kirsch, who was the only other person close enough to call a friend. She sees other lone travellers, each full of ambition and high expectations, and walks on, dreadful, her body heavy, waiting for someone to call for her, to stop her.

It doesn’t happen, and she makes it into the plane smoothly without interruptions. Her life isn’t like the movies Laura makes her watch after all. There’s no happy ending, only a cliff-hanger, of what could have been, sitting at the edge of her brain and the tip of her fingers. The weight of Laura’s head against her shoulder lifted, as the air pressure changes, and her thoughts are washed out from the buzzing in her ears, and she hums.

**-x-**

Laura wakes up to an empty bed. It’s a sensation that she hasn’t felt in a long time, cool sheets against the grain of fingertips. Carmilla wasn’t an early riser, so the occasion where she awoke alone wasn’t common. Nor was the silence present in the house. Or the breakfast laid out on the table.

Carmilla hasn’t cooked in a long time. Not since the last of her family left Styria, she hasn’t. It reminds her of when she used to make breakfast for her siblings, before they had to go to work. Carmilla never really told her that, but she knows, because she sees the girl finger the recipes she already knows by heart every now and then, and the picture she keeps hidden at the back of her worn out leather wallet, a gift from her brother.

She files the cooking to the list of things she’d question Carmilla about later at night, along with her little farewell notation the day before, as she swallows the food laid out on the table.

The air is strangely stale, and the living space is oddly empty, with insignificant changes Laura can’t pick up, but can feel. Like shift in balance. She can’t quite put a finger to it, but it’s there. It unsettles her, like a calm, still air before a storm. Like white clouds tinted grey, so small a difference she can’t tell them apart.

She only notices the light blue post it on the desk at night, when she returns, in place of where her atlas used to be. DL167, it reads in fine print, the scramble of a writing in a faded black ink Laura recognises to be from the fountain pen she gifted Carmilla four years ago. The one she always carries around, as if there’d be a use for it anywhere.

It doesn’t make sense, the message didn’t mean anything, not in Laura’s wide vocabulary. She doesn’t understand its meaning. Nor why Carmilla isn’t back yet.

She pushes the blame to the possibility of Carmilla having another one night stand, and the code given being the girl’s address.

Except Carmilla is gone for the rest of the week, and Laura can’t reach her phone, none of the calls going through. And the code gnaws at her. Like something out of a déjà vu, but she just couldn’t recall. Something she has at the tip of her tongue, just under her palm but can’t seem to find.

A week is how long it takes, for her to notice the plane model. For her to figure out.

**-x-**

Carmilla visits all thirty six cities between business meetings and her massive workload, sending back a picture and souvenir every time. She’s afraid of leaving Laura behind, and she’s not ready for their relationship, be it as friends or anything less, anything more, to end. So she goes to the places Laura has marked down. Each of them seemed to showcase a trait of Laura’s.

They scream at her, like how she used to curse at airplanes for bringing people away. And now, for bringing her away. She travels to the spaces Laura used to dream of, to live out the future of what could have been.

France is her last stop. Nice is full of beaches, ones she can see Laura running across, leaving her footprints on stretches of sand, along the seaside, and for the waves to wash it all away. She sits, by the wet shore, and she can barely hear Laura’s laughter. It’s at times like this when she’s alone, undistracted and caught up by the fast-paced business society that she remembers, vaguely, what Laura used to be.

And she remembers how to hum a melody that belonged only to them. To spot the North Star – their Polaris.

The North Star is supposed to bring lost souls back to each other. But she’s still lost, even after seeing it from different angles. Maybe there was no one waiting on the other side, explaining why she couldn’t find where she belongs, where was home.

She leans back, a familiar weight pressing against her as she sinks into the sand, the waves lapping softly, the sound of water filling her senses. She closes her eyes, and she can vaguely hear it, Laura’s voice, and she can feel her parts of her body burning up, her neck, where Laura used to lay, her hands, and her arms, holding onto Laura’s frame.

The beach leaves her empty. Like water, it fills her with memories, but like waves it pulls back, into the deep vast sea where it belongs. Like sand, it lets her remember the coarse strands of hair running through her fingers, but like a time in a sandglass, it slips through before she’s able to hold on.

Nice is the last of Laura present. Lyon, the medieval roman town, belongs to Carmilla. The town Laura thought she’d like, its renaissance, littered which countless churches. Notre Dame, that sits atop a hill. That’s where she heads to see it one last time, the Polaris.

How many stars does it take, to bring her home?

She doesn’t know. She’s trying to find out.

**-x-**

The first time she receives Carmilla’s letter, she’s angry. Angry she’d only thought to contact her three months after her abrupt departure. But then she loses the pent up grudge, and hatred when the contents fall out of the simple brown letter. There’s no contact information, no words of apology, no return address, just a picture and a souvenir, a plane model and the Polaris.

Laura doesn’t know what to say, when Danny asks about her extensive collection of plane models and pictures of the same star. She answers that she’s interested in astronomy, and has a thing for plane models. Danny gets her a plane model on her following birthday, it’s grandly decorated, her name painted across in rose gold calligraphy. It doesn’t quite compare to the plane ones lined up across the desk.

Danny’s plane doesn’t make it on display.

The letters keep coming, the intervals a confusing pattern that she cannot solve. Math was more of Carmilla’s forte after all. What did start making sense was the locations the planes were from, Laura would be able to recognise them anywhere. They were the places she’d dreamt of so long ago.

She counts down the number of letters, the number of planes, the angles of Polaris, their Polaris, she’d received. She knows that by the thirty-sixth letter, it’d be over. Everything would slowly fade away. Carmilla would be but a fond memory and a name.

Laura’s not sure if she can handle that. She’s used to having someone to lean back on. Danny’s shoulder just doesn’t do the same. And Laura now understands the fear of leaving, and the hatred Carmilla has for airplanes. They bring them away, to new places, everywhere else but back. And she’s left waiting alone, for a figure that would never board the plane and come back, that would never return.

She wishes upon the star, like how Carmilla had taught her before. She wishes for Carmilla to come back, and for things to be the same, like they used to be. She doesn’t ask for something more, like she used to. Laura just wishes for the balance to be returned, to be able to say her name again.

France is the last to arrive at her doorstep. Something different, a bag of wet sand falls out, along with the picture of the Polaris. This is followed by another letter, with a plane model and another picture.

 _I’m the thirty-sixth._ The piece of paper that she find tucked inside the brown letter reads. _And you are the thirty-fifth. And I am hollow, after leaving the beach of Nice._

Laura’s hand find the bag of sand. The only unique item she’d received. It’s the thirty-fifth. She’s trying to understand Carmilla’s words, the beauty she’d preferred to leave alone in the extent of their relationship. The sand moulds to the shape of the plastic it’s held in, under the wrath of Laura’s grip. She feels something hard, that doesn’t move out of her palm when she squeezes.

A message in a bottle, hidden under the wet sand of Nice.

**-x-**

She hears the ringing of the dialling tune, the number she’d found written in the tiny capsule. She almost cries when she hears that voice, an octave lower than everyone else’s, raspy from the lack of sleep. Carmilla’s voice.

“I hate you,” is the first thing she blurts to Carmilla’s greeting. There’s a chuckle on the other end of the line, and there’s small talk, the both of them kicking around the topic, not wanting to face the very end of their road. The end of the phone call. Where they know they have to put it all down.

She hears Carmilla hum over the speaker, and it comes flooding back, nights under the oak tree, and the soft whispers after a basketball game. The shoulder she’d lean on after practice, after every match, after daylight hours. She remembers how Carmilla looks under the starlight, how her eyes seemed to get darker, forming a galaxy of its own when the stars reflect in her pupils, a milky way that seemed to always captivate her, like how the sky captivated Carmilla. She remembers intertwined hands and cold nights, how Carmilla alone was enough to keep her warm.

She remembers how her name used to roll off her tongue.

**-x-**

Carmilla answers the phone, tired from the day at work, ready to sleep in a different time zone, her body worn out by jet lag. A proclamation of hate reaches her ears, and it doesn’t take longer than a heartbeat for her to know who it was.

She’d recognise that voice anywhere, and the rhythm of her breaths, a pattern she memorised by heart.

“Is that how you greet someone after two years, creampuff? Where have your manners gone?” she laughs. She hasn’t laughed in a long time.

“It boarded an airplane.”

“Say, how have you been?” Carmilla changes the subject, and Laura is glad too. They didn’t want to face the problem just yet.

All things have to come to an end. Good or bad. So does the phone call.

“Corvae, huh.”

“Yeah.”

“So it wasn’t just any internship,”

Carmilla hums in response, something she hasn’t done in a while, not since she had to be more professional and less casual with her responses as an ambassador of the company. She asks for a thirty-seventh, a full ending that was for both of them.

“Right here in Styria.” Is the answer she gets, and Carmilla smiles, and hums yet again, in approval.

“Airplanes don’t bring people back.”

There’s silence, and she basks in Laura’s ragged breathing for seconds, holding her eyes open so she doesn’t fall asleep in the middle of the phone call.

“You know, Laura,” she hasn’t said her actual name in a long time, and it’s bitter, it being the last time she would probably say it, “you haven’t properly bid me goodbye yet.”

“We don’t do goodbyes.”

“Please?”

Both of them knew what it meant, it would mean Carmilla wouldn’t be coming back anymore. That she can’t expect to see her figure walk through the door at night and for everything to be back to what it used to be. For Laura to bury herself in the crook of her neck. To breathe in the stars that Carmilla had collected. But they needed to put it down. Till next time.

“Goodbye, Carm.”

“Goodbye.”

Sometimes Carmilla wonder why the word for farewells is goodbye. For goodbyes aren’t good at all.

**-END-**

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Also to cheer up the really gloomy ending: "But airplanes bring people to new places." ;) 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed the ride, there may or may not be a sequel, because it seems really whole as a stand alone so.


End file.
